


Favor for Favor

by Gray Cardinal (Gray_Cardinal)



Series: A Sitch in Slash [1]
Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: Characters Writing Fanfiction, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-16
Updated: 2007-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:33:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gray_Cardinal/pseuds/Gray%20Cardinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Shego writes extra-spicy slashfic, and makes Kim an offer she can't afford to refuse.  (And no, it's not the offer you think it is.)  Meanwhile, Dr. Drakken is plotting world conquest again....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Slave to the Muffins

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** _Kim Possible and related characters are the property of Disney (surprise!). However, what happens in fanfic stays in fanfic, and the following story is entirely the author's fault. It should be added that [Narbonic](http://www.narbonic.com) is a real Web comic created and written by Shaenon K. Garrity._
> 
> **Notes:** _This story was originally written as a stand-alone piece in connection with a challenge; however, the plot bunny for a sequel bit shortly after I finished it. There are presently two stories in the series, with brief notes for several more waiting in the wings._
> 
> As to the series title -- while this story and its sequels are about_ slash, and (in some ways at least) about the evolving relationship between Kim and Shego, I don't think I can call either this story or the series "Kigo" in the usual sense of the term. And at least so far, the stories are not themselves slash._

Kim Possible scooted her chair backward, stretched her left arm as far behind her as she could, and snagged the Kimmunicator lying on the foot of her bed. "That should do it for tonight, Wade," she said. "I just uploaded the last four cases."

"Got 'em," said the quart-sized computer genius, his hands still flying over his keyboard even as he turned his head toward the video pickup. "I'll have the new batch for you tomorrow."

Kim yawned, clicked the Kimmunicator off, and tossed it into the arms of an oversized plush Kanga. Saving the world from Dr. Drakken and Monkey Fist, she reflected, was easy compared to solving people's mundane business and personal problems -- but without the bankroll of favors she built up by applying common sense to the overcomplicated, there'd be no way for her to pursue her crime-fighting career.

At least this evening's assignments had been relatively simple. A call to Nana had enabled her to work out the secret ingredient in an old family applesauce cookie recipe, she'd deduced the whereabouts of a world-famous stage magician's missing lockpicks after ten minutes of skilled questioning over the phone, and a few minutes of data-wrangling from Wade would resurrect a popular TV show's crashed SFX computer. The call from Ty Pennington, who needed a way to demolish a seemingly indestructible house for his latest _Extreme Makeover: Home Edition_ project, had taken the most finesse -- she'd had to get her parents' permission to send her twin brothers to Oklahoma to do the job.

"All by themselves?" Mom had asked doubtfully.

"Wouldn't dream of it!" Kim had assured her. "Ron will be along. And Rufus, of course. I'd go too, but I have cheerleading practice tomorrow -- and much as I hate to admit it, Jim and Tim can do this one themselves." Mom's expression had lightened at the mention of the little naked mole rat; she had done an EEG on Rufus some time back, and though she wouldn't discuss the results ("patient confidentiality, you know"), Kim noticed that she didn't seem to be worrying nearly as much about Kim's and Ron's more harrowing adventures since that examination.

Mom had also given her blessing to the twins' trip, which meant that Kim could go to bed with a -- temporarily, at least -- clear caseload. She was just pulling fresh PJs out of her drawer when an instant-message ping -- or more accurately, the Power Ranger _beep-beep-boop-boop_ that identified an IM from Monique -- warbled out of her computer speakers.

Kim suppressed another yawn as she crossed the room, hit the Shift key to revive the screen, and eyed the message. "Got a deadline," it read, "need a quick beta on a Harry/Ginny fic. Couldyoucouldyoucouldyou? Homemade blueberry muffins...."

"You know me too well, girlfriend," Kim told the screen, pulling her chair up and plunking herself into it. Kim herself didn't write fanfic -- between cheerleading practice, saving the world regularly, and building up her favor-reserves, there simply wasn't time -- but she was as fond of dreamy romance as the next girl, and her ability to read mind-bendingly fast and absorb minutely precise detail made her inordinately popular with those of her friends who did. Almost too popular, in fact -- word of Kim's talent as a beta reader had begun leaking out into some of the online fan communities, and there were beginning to be more requests than she could handle easily.

But Monique was a special case -- and her mother's blueberry muffins were world-class. "I am a slave to the muffins," she typed back. "Tell me more."

"It's only 3K words," came Monique's IM. "Easy as...three muffins?"

"I am a sleepy slave," Kim typed. "Three for Thursday, four for tomorrow morning."

There was a pause. "You're about five minutes too late for four. Three and a half? Plus a grandé-size hot chocolate at Javalatte? Please???"

Kim chuckled, visualizing Monique brushing blueberry crumbs off her fingers. "Finish your snack, girlfriend. Three plus the grandé HC."

"Done," Monique responded. "Sending, O Beta Goddess." Within moments, the file landed in Kim's email; she changed into her PJs while it was printing, then flicked on her bedside lamp and settled down to read.


	2. A Guaranteed Win-Win

"...Dave Davenport growled with pure, carnivorous lust, and _fzzzzkrrrpkow!_"

Shego cursed; that was the third keyboard she'd fried in the last hour. Writing sex scenes was difficult when your hands threw off green energy bolts at the slightest lapse of emotional control. Unfortunately, voice dictation software was out of the question. The living quarters in their current time-share lair were bugged six ways from Sunday, and she wasn't about to give Dr. Drakken the satisfaction of hearing her narrate the most ferociously erotic **Narbonic** slash this side of the Crab Nebula -- and then attempting to tease her about it later.

The trouble was that almost everything Shego wrote -- **Narbonic**, **Alias**, **Smallville**, **Xena**, and occasionally **Pretender** or **Walker, Texas Ranger** \-- was ferocious, page-meltingly hot, fiercely amoral slash. As a result, she went through keyboards by the gross when she was on a writing binge -- and, she noted as she collected a new one from the dwindling stack in her closet, it was about time to order another pallet of the dratted things. But she had developed a reputation for hard-edged consistency in the parts of cyberspace that went in for that sort of fanfic, and releasing her villainous frustrations in prose was a good deal more productive than quick-frying Dr. Drakken to a crackly turquoise crunch. As irritating as her blue-skinned boss often was, he was also childishly easy to manipulate -- any other mad scientist would have her working three times as hard for two-thirds the pay (not counting what she routinely skimmed from Drakken's accounts in the Grand Caymans when he wasn't looking).

Besides the high keyboard-destruction rate, the only recurring annoyance in Shego's fanfic-writing career was the ongoing lack of reliable beta readers. Finding readers in general was absurdly easy; finding readers who could help her refine her literary technique was another matter entirely -- especially in the smaller fandoms, most notably **Narbonic**. Word on the Net was that someone -- it wasn't entirely clear who -- had put out a search-and-destroy order on _jade_firecat_, the alias under which her **Narbonic** stories appeared, after she'd released a five-part Helen Sr./Helen/Artie/Mell slash epic. Downloads went through the roof, but readers willing to openly volunteer to beta her latest opus (a Dave/Artie/Caliban slashfest) vanished at least as fast.

She contemplated the problem as she logged on and prowled through LiveJournal's fanfic communities, looking for stories she hadn't yet read. Oddly enough, what she liked to read was often very different from what she wrote; usually slash, to be sure, but often much quieter and less, well, pornographic -- and in fandoms that included **Due South** and **Early Edition** and even Harry Potter (chiefly Snape/Draco, sometimes Snape/Moody, and, when she could find it, Snape/Dumbledore) along with her other preferred universes.

It was in a Snape/Sirius thread that she found the post from _multinique_, responding to someone's question about Potter beta talent: "I've been showing mine to _miss_maybe_; she gives the best beta ever. Fiercely busy, though -- she's got about three lives outside fic, and I only rate because we go way back."

Curious, Shego followed the trail of friends-lists to _miss_maybe_'s journal, which looked at first like a dead end. The most recent entry was months old, the author seemed largely preoccupied with cheerleading and an unspecified job, and she didn't seem to have written any fanfic herself. But when she glanced over the "Interests" section of the User Info page, a handful of items caught her eye: _harry potter, naked mole rats, superheroes, world travel_...and _narbonic_.

Shego's eyebrow went up. "Couldn't be. Or could it?"

_miss_maybe_, she observed, didn't give a geographic location. "Wise girl," Shego muttered, clicking back to _multinique_'s User Info. The other fan had been less cautious, and Shego barely lifted her hand in time to prevent a bright green _ffzzZAP!_ of satisfaction from claiming another keyboard. "Middleton," she said cheerfully.

Thirteen minutes later, her spyware probes had established to her complete satisfaction that _miss_maybe_ was in fact her much-despised goody-goody adversary, Kimberly Ann Possible. "And she reads **Narbonic**," Shego said, thoughtfully. "Who'd have thought? This has definite possibilities."

It took seven solid hours to put all the pieces in place: two and three-quarters to finish the sex scene, fifteen minutes to wind up the story afterward, three hours to create and deploy a suitable virtual identity, and an hour to draft a covering note with just the right touch of helplessness. The 'Net ID was the trickiest part of the project -- it had to be sufficiently crackable that Kim's pet computer genius could backtrail it to Shego without too much trouble, but not so easily penetrated that Wade would realize she meant him to tag her.

Finally, though, the package was complete, and Shego logged her newly crafted persona onto Kim Possible's official Web site. "Oh, yes," she breathed, a Grinch-like grin spreading across her face as she clicked her way through the favor-requesting process. It was, she thought, a truly delicious dilemma. If dear, innocent little Kimmy chose to accept Shego's "favor", thinking to gain an advantage in some future encounter, she'd be forced to read and respond to a fic so gloriously, pervasively pornographic that it nearly curled Shego's own hair just thinking about it. _So much for innocent, Kimmy_, she mused. _You'll never be able to look at the Disney Channel the same way again._ On the other hand, if Kim turned the job down on principle, she'd have to explain why -- and that in itself would give Shego enough ammunition to turn Kim's face strawberry-red with embarrassment the next time they tangled. _Anything to put you off your game, Kimmy dear._ And just maybe expanding her arch-enemy's smoldering sensual horizons would be enough to allow Shego to finally put paid to the rivalry once and for all.

"Oh, yes," she said again, "this one is a guaranteed win-win." She stabbed down at the Enter key with joyously fiendish glee -- and an ear-jarring _ffsshhkrklpoppop-ffzzzklkrZZAPP!_ as the keyboard sizzled and exploded.

Not, however, before the lair computers had dutifully dispatched the files to their chosen destination. Shego gave the remains of the keyboard a resigned glance, but she was whistling as she headed for the closet to break out another replacement.


	3. Girl-Stuff Delicate

The Kimmunicator beeped exactly five seconds after Kim finished getting dressed the next morning. Which could have been creepy, she thought, if Wade were three or four years older. But even though he had her morning routine memorized down to the second, she just couldn't envision the chubby ten-year-old as a potential stalker.

"So what's up? Is Drakken after someone else's death ray again, or is it Senor Senior Sr. buying up black-market disco balls?"

The boy genius giggled nervously. "Nothing like that. Just -- one of the favor requests in today's email is kind of...umm...delicate."

Kim cocked an eyebrow at the screen. "Are we talking national-security delicate, priceless-Ming-vase delicate, or brain-surgery delicate?"

Wade shook his head at each query, and his face was turning an interesting shade of pink -- which, given his complexion, was no small event. Kim stared at him for a moment, then snapped her fingers. "_Oh._ Girl-stuff delicate. Just send it on -- we wouldn't want those girl-cooties infecting your computer system."

"Not -- exactly." Wade shook his head again. "And it's a little late for that, anyway. That's just it, though -- I'm not sure I should let you see this."

"I'm a big girl, Wade," she told him. "Just spill it. What kind of this are we talking about here?"

He took a deep breath, then another. "Fanfic. More specifically, **Narbonic** fanfic. Really slashy Narbonic fanfic -- and I mean _really_ slashy. She wants you to -- what's the word? -- beta it."

"Oh." Kim's tone was abruptly much more serious. "I -- see." Then she frowned. "Wait a second; you're worried about me reading major slash-fic? What are you doing reading that stuff? You're -- you're...." She trailed off, realizing that there was no safe way to finish that sentence.

Now Wade's laughter sounded more genuine. "Good grief, I didn't actually read it. I've got filters installed -- only that's the thing. That piece of slash-fic was so, uh, hot it melted the filtering software."

Kim's eyebrow went back up. "Come on, Wade, even I know you can't melt software -- it's all ones and zeroes, right?"

"Wanna bet?" Wade shot back. He held up a CD-ROM. "This is before. And this is after." He set down the disc and tapped a Pyrex measuring cup half full of thick, silvery liquid. "Not to worry; I've got backups. But still -- you see what I'm talking about."

"Okay, I'm impressed." Clearly, Kim needed to have a talk with Monique. Beta reading was something she did for fun -- relaxing-fun, that is, as opposed to the exciting-fun that went with saving the world regularly. If her working Web site was drawing beta requests, she'd have to figure a way to deal with a big spike in volume.

Or maybe not. "Any reason we shouldn't just send this one back?" she asked Wade, trying to sound noncommittal. But she couldn't help being curious. **Narbonic** fandom wasn't large to start with; any new fanfic was ordinarily grounds for enthusiasm. And of course there was the hormonally driven sort of curiosity. It was only text, after all -- surely it couldn't be _that_ trashy, and she was a red-blooded American teenager. A very mature teenager. A--

Wade's response interrupted her train of thought. "I don't know," he said. "You might want to look at the cover message, at least; she sounded awfully desperate, and she says we can name our own favor in return." That made Kim's ears tingle; not many of her customers offered blank-check favors, especially for something as straightforward as a story beta.

"Let me see it," she replied, then toggled the Kimmunicator screen to display the text file. She studied the note briefly, and frowned. "Hmm -- Lady Noir? I don't recognize the handle, and that's weird. I thought I knew most of the name authors writing **Narbonic**, at least by reputation -- even the slashers, and there's even fewer of those. Wade, can you run a trace on that ID?"

"On it," Wade said, sounding relieved to have something relatively safe to do. "Meanwhile, what about the story?"

"Send that to me," Kim said firmly. "Until I decide what to do with it, it's better off on my computer than yours. I promise I won't actually read it yet -- at least not till after you've IDed this Lady Noir."

Wade gave her a skeptical look. "Cross my heart," said Kim, suiting action to word.

"All right," he said doubtfully. "I'll let you know as soon as I've got something." The visual signal clicked off, and a few moments later the Kimmunicator beeped an upload-received tone, confirming the file's arrival. Kim picked the device up, glanced at the filename -- _The Bad, the Worse, and the Fuzzy_ \-- and slid it into its usual pocket in her school pack.


	4. Darkest Oklahoma

Kim was making a couple of final notes in the margins of Monique's manuscript when Ron arrived after breakfast to pick up the Tweebs. "What's that?" he wanted to know. "Homework? I don't remember any papers being due."

"Not exactly," Kim said, shifting her arm to cover as much of the manuscript as possible. "Doing a favor."

Ron, predictably, leaned closer. "Personal or professional?"

"Personal," Kim said, a little too firmly. "And private. For Monique."

The sound of the light bulb going off over Ron's head was practically audible. "Ohhh! It's a new fic, isn't it? That reminds me...." He rummaged briefly in the pack he was carrying and pulled out a thick sheaf of paper. "Would you? Could you? It's **Power Rangers**...."

Kim sighed. Ron, also predictably, had taken up writing fanfic the minute he'd found out that half the school -- including most of the cute girls -- was writing it, and he'd been doing his best to inflict it on Kim ever since. The trouble was that Ron's fics were blazingly, unapologetically, Marty-Stu epics in which Ron (often under his own name) stepped in to save the Power Rangers or Scooby Doo or Harry Potter or the X-Men from certain doom at the hands of a supremely deadly villain. Like everyone else, Ron had quickly discovered Kim's gifts as a beta reader and was eager to make use of them -- but in typical Ron fashion, any suggestion that his protagonist's literary heroics were a little over the top went right over his head. It made trying to critique Ron's manuscripts an exercise in futility, and since Ron's fics tended to run long, it was becoming a time-consuming exercise.

And yet, the scariest thing was that apart from their flaming Marty-Stuness, Ron's stories were decent and getting better. Not surprisingly, he didn't write romances -- but his eye for action scenes was sharp and getting sharper, and his ear for dialogue was almost as good (although Kim had warned him a time or two about stealing lines wholesale from Dr. Drakken and Shego).

Ron waggled the manuscript in front of her nose. "Please??? You can read it while the Tweebs and I are playing Big Bad Wolf in darkest Oklahoma."

On cue, the twins materialized at the doorway. "I'll huff and I'll puff..." began one--

"...and I'll blooowww your house up!" finished the other.

"Shouldn't that be _down_?" Kim asked, her mind still in editing mode.

"Not this week!" said the Tweebs in unison. "There's gonna be an Earth-shattering KABOOM!" Kim tilted her eyes heavenward and heroically resisted commenting on their overuse of quotations and the clash between fairy-tale and TV references.

"As long as it's a safe Earth-shattering KABOOM," Kim's father said cheerfully, joining the circle. "You keep a close eye on these two, Ron. And you too, Rufus," he added to the naked mole rat, who popped up from Ron's shirt pocket.

"Can do, Dr. P," Ron replied, as Rufus chittered and made a tiny thumbs-up sign. "Kim?"

"Oh, all right," she said, shrugging and taking the manuscript. "I'll see what I can do. Gotta go, Dad," she added, flipping her own pack over her shoulder. "Meeting Monique at Javalatte before school."


	5. As Long As It's Vanilla Enough

Monique was already at the coffee bar when Kim walked in a few minutes later, and instantly jumped up to procure Kim's hot chocolate -- "grandé, light whip, sprinkles, no marshmallows" -- before Kim could get in line. They settled at a tiny round table in a back corner of the shop, and Monique slid a white paper bag across the table along with the cup.

"Well?" Her friend's expression couldn't quite match the trademarked Possible Puppy-Dog Pout, but it came close.

With an effort, Kim withstood the creeping wistfulness. "We -- need to talk," she said, trying to sound carefully neutral.

Monique's face went from puppy-dog to full-on, dismayed Eeyore. "It's that bad? But--but--"

"No, no, the story's great," Kim said instantly, holding up a hand. "Mostly great. There's just one or two--" She stopped, took a breath, gulped a swallow of hot chocolate, and tried to collect herself. "Not about the fic, about the 'Kim is a beta goddess' thing. It's getting kind of out of hand."

The Eeyore face faded to more of a Piglet-like nervousness. "I swear, I never meant to -- it's just that -- well, you _are_ a beta goddess. And I wanted to, well..."

"Gather worshippers to grovel at my feet?" Kim supplied, reaching over just in time to put a firm hand on her friend's shoulder before Monique could drop to her knees in mock reverence. "Don't even think. I get enough of that from Ron. Seriously, though -- we may have a problem. Wade got a beta request through my Web site this morning."

Monique, looking much more like herself, eyed Kim sharply. "The official KP site?" At Kim's nod, she went on, "That's -- funky. I double-swear, I only ever posted about you in the Cauldron and on my LJ, and both of those would've been under your handles, not as, well, you." She paused. "What'd they ask you to beta?"

"That's -- funky, too. It's a **Narbonic** fic, and it's really..." Kim frowned, searching for an appropriate word, "...potent slash. It melted Wade's content filters."

"**Narbonic**," Monique said. "Well, mad science is more your speed than mine. Sounds hot, though -- only, how do you melt software? Isn't it all, like, intangible?"

Kim laughed and described Wade's before-and-after illustration. "I've got the file," she admitted, "but I haven't looked at it. Yet."

"You going to?" asked Monique. "What kind of favor did they offer?"

"Blank check," Kim said. "And that's the thing -- I don't know. It's -- tempting. We don't get a lot of those."

"Tempting," echoed Monique. "Well, that's one way to put it. If it's hot enough to melt a CD, it could sure do a number on a girl's hormones." She shivered, but not with cold. "Probably safer than hanging at Cape Foggyweather with certain members of the football team, though. And a blank-check favor...."

"Tempting," Kim said again, a little dreamily. "Way, way tempting." One couldn't travel for long in fanfic circles without interacting to some degree with slash and slash-writers, but Kim had managed to confine most of her reading to material that was mildly R-rated at most. And she was too innately curious -- on both literary and hormonal levels -- not to speculate on what might lie farther along the scale. "I suppose I could just--"

The Kimmunicator beeped before she had it halfway out of her pack, and she nearly dropped it in surprise. "Wade?"

"Got an ID on the mysterious Lady Noir," he said, "and you wouldn't believe who she is."

Kim automatically picked the least likely name she could think of. "Bonnie Rockwaller?"

Wade blinked. "No -- Shego! She did a pretty good job covering her trail, but I managed to peek inside one of the mainframes she hacked. No doubt about it -- _The Bad, the Worse, and the Fuzzy_ is her handiwork."

Both Monique and Kim stared into the Kimmunicator screen. "Shego writes fanfic?" Monique said. "Who'd have thought?"

"Weirder than that," said Kim slowly. "Shego writes **Narbonic** slash-fic, and she's offered me a blank-check favor to beta it for her."

Monique's eyes went wide. "If Shego's writing it, it's probably nastier than hardcore Snape/Voldemort with Hagrid/Buckbeak thrown in. You can't read it -- it'll probably curl your hair, melt your conscience, and leave grease stains all over your sense of justice. You've got to erase it!"

"There's just got to be a catch," agreed Wade. "I'd better run some more diagnostics on that file." He didn't look entirely pleased at the prospect, however.

"Hold on," Kim said. "There's a blank check from Shego riding on this."

"Exactly," Wade retorted. "If she thought there was even the tiniest chance she'd ever have to pay off that favor, she'd never have offered it."

Monique frowned. "Right -- but if Kim can somehow give her the beta anyway, she'd be stuck with honoring the deal."

"And she would, too," Kim put in. "Shego's more slithery than a snakepit full of anacondas, but she's a work-for-hire girl -- if she makes a deal, she sticks to it."

There was a brief silence, interrupted only by the sounds of hot chocolate being slurped, as the three young people tried to wrap their minds around the problem. Monique was the first to break it.

"You know, Kim," she said, tentatively, "I bet I've read more slash than you have -- more of the graphic stuff, at least. And this whole thing is probably sort of my fault anyway. Shego must have seen one of my posts and traced the handles back to us. Maybe I could--"

"Stop right there, girlfriend," Kim said firmly, squeezing Monique's hand. "Trust me, you do not want to go there. You don't want to go within fifty miles of there -- and I wouldn't let you, anyway. I appreciate the offer -- really I do -- but if Shego's slash is half as X-rated as you guys think it is, I can't risk letting you anywhere near it."

Monique sighed. "If it's that toxic, why not just send it back, like you do all the _please do my homework for me_ requests? If Shego sent it in under a fake ID, she can't very well complain to your face next time you two are whaling on each other."

"That's what I--" Wade began, but stopped at Kim's sudden, sharply indrawn breath. "You okay, Kim?"

"For now? Sure," Kim said. "But I think I just figured out the other half of Shego's plan."

Monique's face and Wade's screen-image both looked blank. "Other half?" asked Monique.

"She will too rag on me in person if we send the story back. I can just hear it -- _I'm disappointed in you, Kimmy -- what, too narrow-minded to enjoy a little slash? Guess you'll have to change your Web slogan to 'I can do anything as long as it's vanilla enough'_." Kim's imitation of Shego was pitch-perfect, right down to the whiny edge.

Wade frowned. "But the ID..."

"Doesn't matter," said Kim. "Maybe she expected you to crack it; if not, she could rag on _you_ for not cracking it. But she can still zing me, whichever way the naco spills."

"That's...evil," Monique said softly. "You read the fic, she corrupts you to the slimy side. You don't read the fic, she plays the goody-two-shoes mind-game card. Talk about your classic dilemmas!"

Kim nodded tiredly. "No kidding. And the sad thing is, I can see it working. It shouldn't -- but it will. You practically wouldn't need embarrassment ninjas to make me disappear."

Monique stared at her friend in shock. "I can't believe I'm hearing this. Are you saying Shego's actually...won?"

Kim didn't answer at once, instead looking glumly into the Kimmunicator's video pickup. "Wade? Any ideas?"

The ten-year-old's face was nearly as bleak. "This kind of thing -- isn't really my department. I can reformat hard drives and replace melted software, but I can't wash your brain out with soap."

For several seconds, there was dead silence around the little corner table. Then Kim slowly began to smile. "Wash your brain out with soap. Wade, you're a genius!"

His expression suggested that he was a very puzzled genius. "Of course I am. But what did I -- oh."

"Oh?" Monique echoed. "Okay, I'm--" Then the light bulb went off. "You think your Mom can spin-dry Shego's slash out of your memory once you've read it? Sounds risky to me, girl."

"Probably," Kim said. "But Mom's the best brain surgeon there is, and I don't see any other way around this one. Besides, Drakken's done weirder things to my brain and it's always worked out. Meanwhile," she added, gulping the remains of her hot chocolate and carefully stuffing the bag of blueberry muffins into her pack, "we've got about four minutes to get to school."


	6. A Girl Needs Her Hobbies

With the Tweebs away, supper at the Possible household was a quiet affair, and Mrs. Dr. Possible took the opportunity to fix cioppino -- admittedly, the kind from a freezer bag, but still a meal with far too many throwable components to be safe when set before Jim and Tim. Afterward, Kim didn't wait for her mother to ask before starting to clear the table and load the dishwasher. Her father, meanwhile, excused himself and disappeared into his study.

"Something on your mind, Kimmy?" Mom asked as she carried the good crystal glasses -- also in use only because the twins were gone -- over to the sink.

Kim reflected, not for the first time, that the nickname sounded infinitely nicer when her mother used it than when Shego did. "Unfortunately, yes," she said. "Or rather, it's going to be. Can you fit me in for a selective memory wipe tomorrow afternoon?"

Her mother stopped in her tracks, nearly dropping the glassware she was carrying. "You're not serious, are you?" She set down the crystal, turned, and gave her daughter a critical looking-over. "No, you are serious. What's going on? You haven't gone anywhere since that business with Monkey Fist last weekend, and I didn't think he went in for brain experiments."

Kim sighed. "I haven't, he doesn't, and I'm all right. Now, anyway. But Shego's got me in a bind, and the only way I can think of to get around it is to do what she wants and then have you -- how did Wade put it? -- wash my brain out with soap afterward."

"Shego? Not Dr. Drakken?" Kim nodded, and to her surprise, so did her mother. "I can't say I'm surprised. I've always thought she was four or five times brighter than Drew. More practical, too."

"No argument there," Kim said. "So you'll help me?"

Mrs. Dr. Possible regarded Kim with a sympathetic expression, but she was shaking her head as she spoke. "I'm a brain surgeon, not a mad scientist. If I could do 'selective memory wipes' at the drop of a scalpel, I'd have customers lined up halfway to Nana's apartment in Florida."

Kim sagged into a chair at the kitchen table. "That's it, then," she said. "You were my last hole card. Oh, well, saving the world was fun while it lasted."

Mom's expression flashed from concerned to alarmed. "It can't be that bad, can it? What exactly is it Shego wants?"

"It's way past that bad," Kim told her mother. "You might want to sit down for this." Once Mom had obliged, she continued, "Shego's looking for advice from me on skanky gay sex."

Mom arched an eyebrow at her. "And why, Kimberly Ann Possible, would she think you were remotely qualified to give that sort of advice?"

Kim managed a weak chuckle. "Mom! The whole point is that I'm _not_ qualified -- yet, anyway -- and Shego's more or less offering me lessons." She paused, processed what she'd said, and turned crimson. "All right, that came out really, really wrong."

"I should hope so," Mrs. Dr. Possible said firmly. "I think you'd better tell me the whole story. From the beginning." She listened attentively as Kim spun out the details of the situation -- translating bits of specialized fanfic dialect along the way -- her expression shifting from surprised to thoughtful and finally to amused.

"And that's it," Kim said, concluding the summation. "I can't give Shego her beta without -- I don't know, sacrificing my innocence sounds totally corny, but that's kind of what it would be. But I can't not give her the beta, because she'll use that to trash my professional rep and play the embarrassment card for all it's worth the next time we tangle. Probably with ninjas. It's a win-win for her -- and a lose-lose for me."

"Oh, I don't know about that." Mom was smiling faintly. "You sub-contracted the Ty Pennington job to Jim and Tim -- all you need is someone to do the beta for you, and you're off the hook."

Kim eyed her mother with a puzzled look. "But who? Monique volunteered, but I turned her down -- if it's not safe for me to do it, it isn't for her either. I don't dare even think about mentioning this to Ron. And Wade's way too young. Who else is there?"

Mom's smile had turned vaguely Sphinx-like, and Kim's muscles twitched as she finally took the hint. "You? But -- but...."

"Now, Kimmy," said Mom, "don't look so shocked. Your generation didn't invent fanfic, you know -- though we didn't have the Web when I first started writing it, so we had to circulate the stories in printzines."

Kim lifted a hand and pushed her jaw back up where it belonged. "You -- wrote fanfic? For what?"

"Wrote?" Mom said. "Who says I ever stopped? A girl needs her hobbies, especially after those long shifts at the hospital."

"Okay, you write fanfic," said Kim, still dazed. "But...."

Her mother came around the table and began massaging Kim's shoulders. "You might not recognize a lot of the shows," she said, sounding wistful. "**Scarecrow &amp; Mrs. King**, **Remington Steele** \-- those were before your time. **Simon &amp; Simon** after that, a few things for **Walker, Texas Ranger** \-- and I tell you, a lot of people are ready to lynch the writers after the ending of that new **Walker** movie last month. More recently, **Pretender** and lately **Smallville**."

"**Remington Steele**?" Kim said. She felt calmer, but the concept of her mother writing fanfic was still sinking in. "So that's why you bought those DVD sets."

"Of course, dear," replied her mother. "I had a major crush on Pierce Brosnan, and that show practically invented UST. Even if they did finally punt it out the window at the end -- oops, you won't have seen that yet, the fifth season set isn't due out for a couple of months."

Kim chuckled weakly. "This is majorly weird," she observed. "You know Monique is going to completely flip out when I tell her. I can tell her, right?"

"I don't see why not," said Mrs. Dr. Possible. "We've probably been posting on the same Web boards for who knows how long now, anyway. You or Monique might even have read some of my stories -- most of them are posted or archived under _braingirl_."

"That sounds familiar," Kim said, frowning. "In fact -- you're on the **Narbonic** boards!"

"Guilty," Mom admitted. "I swear, sometimes that strip seems like a field guide to your rogues' gallery -- but some of the fics! I am so not surprised that Shego writes **Narbonic** slash." She sat down again. "Oh, my, yes -- I'll give her a beta she won't forget. I assume you've got the story-file?"

Kim nodded, but didn't move to get the Kimmunicator. "This feels -- really strange, somehow. I mean, I'm not sure I wanted to know my mom writes fanfic. Especially -- hot fanfic. I think it's one of those Things Teenagers Are Not Meant To Know."

Mom grinned. "Not to worry. The really mature stuff is under a different byline -- and I'm not telling you that one. Yet, anyway."

"Good," Kim said. "Oh, and about that beta; be fair. After all, Shego's a client now." She laughed suddenly. "And who knows -- maybe the fic is really well-written skanky gay sex!"

"I'll believe that when I read it," her mother retorted. "Now let's see the file."


	7. It Just Doesn't Seem Right

"We've got company!" Shego told Dr. Drakken, gesturing toward one of the wall monitors in the fruitcake factory's security control room. Kim Possible and her annoying sidekick -- Ron something-or-other -- were climbing as silently as they could down a set of service stairs from the roof into a storage room. As usual, this meant that Kim was making no noise whatsoever, while Ron's shoes _click-click-click_ed loudly on the concrete steps and something jingled in his pants pockets.

Drakken glanced at the screen and stiffened. "Kim Possible!" He flicked his headset microphone on and bellowed, "Station Fourteen -- fire a sleep-gas grenade up those stairs! Now!"

Much to Shego's surprise, the maneuver worked. Moments later, Kim and Ron reached a stairwell and collapsed in a cloud of pale green mist, as did the small pink mole rat who fell out of Ron's shirt pocket. Drakken rubbed his hands together in glee. "Bring the prisoners to--"

He paused abruptly. "No," he said with uncharacteristic firmness. "If I simply tie them up, set up a fiendishly diabolical death-trap, and allow them the delicious panic of contemplating their awful demise while I explain my ingenious plan, that dratted girl will somehow manage to escape, neutralize my entire squadron of killer henchmen, destroy a fortune in evil weaponry, and foil our plans for the -- sixty-second time, I think it is. Better to simply do away with them all before they wake up."

The outburst caught Shego by surprise, but she couldn't argue with the logic -- Kim and her friends were all too good at wriggling out of inescapable doom. And yet, as she reached for her own headset control to give the order, it occurred to her that she hadn't faced her nemesis in person since getting the beta of _The Bad, the Worse, and the Fuzzy_ back.

It had been a surprise in more ways than one. Despite the enormous temptation of the blank-check favor, she hadn't really expected Kim Possible, purest of the pure, to submerge herself in what even Shego admitted was one of the deepest, most pornographic gutters in all of fanfic. But she had gotten her beta -- and not the one she'd expected, either. The critique hadn't been mere generality and fluff. There'd been detailed, incisive, and often scorching notes on every page, all too accurately pointing out lapses in plotting -- and worse, chiding her in chapter-and-verse depth on the implausibility of some of the sex scenes. "Artie's too big to fit in that space," one comment had observed, "at least if he's going to be able to breathe while he's in there." Yet there'd also been compliments, particularly about her characterizations of Helen Sr. and Mell.

It was easily the most thorough, thoughtful beta Shego had ever seen. Its author, she reflected, more than merited the "Beta Goddess" title -- and gave every sign of understanding uncannily well just what drove Shego's literary urges. It would be a shame, she thought, to lose Kim Possible just when she might finally have come to her senses about the whole good-vs.-evil thing...and besides, she wanted a chance to see firsthand just what her handiwork had accomplished.

Aloud, she said, "You'd let some -- minion have the satisfaction of taking out the greatest enemy of mad scientists and evil geniuses everywhere? It just doesn't seem right."

Drakken frowned. "There is that," he admitted. "And I do so enjoy the gloating. But still...."

"We've got an advantage this time," Shego pointed out. "This place is totally computer-controlled -- that's how we spotted them so fast -- but the command systems are separate from the processing floor. We can set it up so nothing she does can disrupt the machinery before it does its thing. And we gassed them all at once -- including that obnoxious little gerbil-creature -- so it's not like there'll be cavalry to the rescue."

"True. Especially about that annoying pink beast," Drakken conceded. He squared his shoulders and shouted in his best Mad Scientist Rant voice, "Very well, Shego, arrange the fiendishly diabolical death-trap. This time, Kim Possible will perish once and for all!"

_Not necessarily,_ Shego thought. _Not if the Kim Possible we knew and despised is already gone forever._


	8. Evil Has Membership Cards?

"Wake up, Kimmy! We wouldn't want you to miss your excruciatingly painful demise!"

"Five more--" Kim tried to roll over and hit the snooze button, but for some reason her body wasn't moving. And there was something wrong with her mother's voice... "Shego!" she said, suddenly wide awake. "How about we skip the demise and get right to the part where I drop-kick you into next Tuesday?"

"I'd rather skip the excruciating pain," came Ron's voice from farther down the conveyor belt to which Kim found herself secured. "Hey? Where's Rufus?"

"Right here," replied Shego cheerfully, reaching backward to hold up a Plexiglas cylinder with a few air holes punched in its top. Inside, the little pink mole rat was chattering angrily. "All set with a prime ringside seat for your slicing and dicing."

"Don't forget the sugar-coating," put in Dr. Drakken, from somewhere beyond Kim's field of vision. "The sugar-coating is very important. Although," he added thoughtfully, "Kim Possible is already so ridiculously sweet that she probably doesn't need it."

"I wouldn't bet on it," Shego advised. "I hear Kimmy's been walking on the spicy side lately -- getting a taste for the real hot stuff. And I'm not talking about habaneros, if you know what I mean. Right, Kimmy?" She favored Kim with a conspiratorial leer.

Ron spoke before Kim could react. "I hope that made sense to you, because I'm, like, totally confused."

"So am I," Drakken said. "Shego, would you kindly explain yourself?"

"Go for it." Kim, who was having no luck whatsoever in freeing herself, found herself in the rare position of agreeing with her arch-enemy. Also, it sounded like a good way to stall for time. "And be sure to include the part about offering me a blank-check favor in trade for doing some light reading."

"You did WHAT??" Drakken's tone was shocked. "Please don't tell me we owe a professional favor to the -- the bane of my very existence."

Shego threw Kim a severely annoyed glance. "All right, I won't. We don't owe dear sweet Kimmy anything; the deal was strictly between her and me. Except little Kimmy here isn't so sweet and innocent anymore. I didn't think you had it in you," she said, turning to gaze down at Kim with a slightly awed expression. "I went through sixteen keyboards in an hour working on the big Dave/Artie sex scene after reading those comments. You're _good!_" She paused, realizing what she'd said. "In a depraved, evil sort of way, I mean."

"I bow before the queen of **Narbonic** slash," Kim said wryly. "Or -- I would, if I weren't a little tied up just now."

"Nice try, Beta Goddess," Shego said, chuckling nastily. "But there's only one way you're getting off that conveyor belt in one piece, and you know what it is."

Kim laughed right back. "The day I need a favor from you to get out of one of Drakken's death-traps -- well, let's not think about that right now."

"In that case, Kim Possible," Drakken cut in, "prepare to meet your doom -- I left all the design details on today's trap to Shego!"

_Uh-oh,_ Kim thought silently. "Do tell," she said aloud.

"Don't mind if I do," Shego said. "Item: one conveyor belt, leading to the vats where chopped fruit is candied and sent on to be stirred into the fruitcake batter. Item: ninety-six incredibly sharp one-point-five inch steel blades, stabbing down on said conveyor belt in incredibly intricate computer-controlled patterns, dicing the fresh fruit into hundreds of uniformly sized pieces and incidentally doing the same to two supremely annoying pains in the rear. Oh, yes, and item: your precious techno-geek can watch the whole thing live on Kimmy-vision." She gestured upward; following her pointing finger, Kim saw the Kimmunicator high overhead, cabled securely to the underside of a catwalk, with Wade's face peering worriedly out of it. "One false move from that thing, and I'll blast it into lovely green sparkles before any of you can stop me."

"I don't know, Kim," said Ron, sounding worried. "I say maybe we do need a favor from Shego to get out of this."

Kim tried to sound reassuring. "Hang in there, Ron; it'll work out. What I want to know is -- why fruitcake? It's not like anyone actually eats it."

"That, my dear," Dr. Drakken said, "is the beauty of my scheme -- they don't need to eat it. I've added a special formula to the candying vat so that the candied fruit will give off an undetectable timed-release mind control gas after it's delivered. We'll merely send dozens of special fruitcakes to world leaders across the globe, pretending to be from their grandmothers -- and once they've been exposed to the gas, they'll all be mine to command!" He launched into a gleefully triumphant mad-scientific laugh.

"But what about us?" demanded Ron.

"Oh, we'll send fruitcakes to your families, too," Drakken said airily. "I'm sure at least part of you will be home in time for Christmas. A very small part."

"_Eeeuuwwwwwww_," Ron said feelingly. "And I don't even like fruitcake!"

Kim, meanwhile, was still wriggling in her restraints to no effect -- and the micro-lasers Wade had built into her outfit didn't seem to be working, either. Shego eyed her prisoner, clearly amused, and produced a plastic bag full of tiny metal disks which she dangled inches above Kim's bound right hand. "Looking for these? Kind of hard to power a micro-laser without batteries." With an effortless toss, she flipped the bag into her hand and made a fiery green fist, causing the energy cells to flare and evaporate in a shower of sparks.

"Not to worry," Kim said, trying not to let her face show her growing alarm. "I was wiping the floor with you long before I got fancy hardware."

"And I'll be wiping what's left of you off the floor in just a few minutes," Shego retorted. "Oh, you could play your Get Out of Death Free card -- but I'm thinking when word gets out that the great Kim Possible had to beg me to save her from her own inescapable doom, the saving-the-world gigs will kind of start drying up. Of course," she added thoughtfully, "you could always reform and start playing on our team. Anyone with the taste to appreciate _The Bad, the Worse, and the Fuzzy_ can't be all goody-goody...."

"You wish!" Kim said -- then paused, her eye caught by a split-second flash from overhead. She glanced up at the Kimmunicator, acknowledging Wade's tiny, quiet expression, then took a deep breath. "Besides, I don't _have_ a Get Out of Death Free card."

Shego blinked. "Huh? Okay, color me confused. I may be a card-carrying minion of evil, but I'm honest -- you gave me the beta, you get the favor. Unless you'd rather be fruitcake chow...."

"Evil has membership cards?" Ron piped up. "I didn't know that!"

"Not now, Ron," Kim told him firmly. Then she looked Shego in the eye. "That beta came from my mother -- which means you owe her a blank-check favor, not me. You want to take bets on what she'll ask for if she finds out you turned us into fruitcake?"

"Your -- mother?" Shego's expression was completely stunned. All the green highlights had washed out of her face, and the energy-auras around her hands had vanished completely. "You didn't read--?"

"Not a word," Kim told her. "Slash is so not my thing."

Shego was shaking her head in disbelief. "Your -- mother."

"Enough!" That was Dr. Drakken, pushing Shego aside and angrily striding forward into Kim's line of sight. "We're wasting time. Activate the fruit conveyor! And goodbye forever, Kim Possible!"

Machinery rumbled to life, and the steel chopping blades flashed downward.


	9. What Was That About Next Tuesday?

"Ron! Don't move a muscle!" Kim shouted as the conveyor belt began to move, and ninety-six razor-sharp blades sliced through the air toward their bound forms. She herself closed her eyes, remaining utterly motionless.

"Gotcha, I -- hey!"

There was a series of whiplike SNAPs as the choppers flashed and slashed, severing Kim's and Ron's restraints and retreating upward without so much as touching Ron's cowlick. Then the conveyor stopped abruptly, and in the next instant Kim had rolled off it and -- as promised -- drop-kicked the still-shellshocked Shego smartly in the forehead. Her Spandex-clad adversary keeled over like a bowling pin, and in the next moment Kim executed a neat back-flip, scooped up Rufus's Plexiglas prison in one hand, and spun its screw-top lid free with the other. The mole rat gave a brief, excited _chir-rip_ and leaped out of the jar, racing for Ron -- who had succeeded in scrambling off the conveyor belt, but not without leaving his pants behind, dangling from the end of one of the steel blades. "I only moved a teeny, tiny bit!" he complained.

Dr. Drakken, recognizing an impending rout when he saw one, was already dashing for the stairs at the far side of the room. Kim paused momentarily to survey her surroundings, spotted a small heap of familiar equipment piled on a nearby table, and swiftly grabbed her grappling-gun. A single shot sent the cord flying to wrap itself handily around the mad scientist's ankles, and Drakken collapsed with a _THUNK-crunch!_, his jaw taking the brunt of the impact. "Curth you, Kim Pothible!" he grumbled as she secured his arms and cuffed him to a pillar.

By that time, Ron had joined her. "Not that I mind being alive, you understand -- but how did we just do that?"

"The magic of computers," Wade's voice said from behind them, causing Ron to jump a foot straight up. Kim turned to find the Kimmunicator hovering in midair courtesy of a whirring helicopter rotor extended from its top. "This whole factory is computer-automated -- and once Shego reminded me of that, it didn't take long for me to hack into the controls and reprogram the fruit-choppers. Then I gave Kim the thumbs-up, and you two did the rest."

"You'll want to make sure Drakken's mind-control formula is purged from the system," Kim told him, moving to replace her confiscated gear in its customary pouches and pockets.

"Already on it," Wade said, nodding. "What about Shego?"

Kim glanced toward the spot where Shego had been lying, only to find it bare. From the top of the far stairs -- almost twenty feet overhead -- a familiar voice called, "What was that about next Tuesday? I was out for barely three minutes. You'll have to do better next time."

Kim took a step toward the stairs, then thought better of it; Shego would be long gone through the roof-access exit before she could reach her nemesis. "Right!" she yelled back. "Just remember -- you still owe my mom a favor!"

Shego laughed, her spirits clearly restored. "Tell her I'll trade her beta for beta any day of the week. She's good -- in a depraved, evil sort of way, that is. I'll bet her slash-fic is almost as hair-curling as mine. _Au revoir!_" With a lithe spring, she disappeared through the roof hatch and was gone.

Ron stared after her for a moment, then turned a dazed expression on Kim. "Your mom writes slash? And she gave Shego a beta? That's -- scary. I think."

Kim sighed. "You're so not kidding. Better her than me, though. For now. I think."

"Right," Ron said. "But that reminds me -- did you ever finish that **Power Rangers** fic I gave you? I was wondering...."

Kim sighed again. It was going to be a long ride home.


End file.
